Elon Musk took to social media early Monday with another side amid President Donald Trump’s tariffs.
Musk posted on X a video of late libertarian economist Milton Friedman explaining how the global supply chain worked to produce a simple pencil.
“There’s not a single person in the world who could make this pencil,” Friedman began in the video. “Remarkable statement? Not at all. The wood from which it’s made, for all I know, comes from a tree that was cut down in the state of Washington. To cut down that tree, it took a saw. To make the saw, it took steel; to make the steel, it took iron ore.”
The economist, who died in 2006 at age 94, went on to say the pencil’s graphite center came from mines in South America, while its rubber eraser came from “Malaya, where the rubber tree isn’t even native. It was imported from South America by some businessmen, with the help of the British government.”
Friedman continued by saying he did not have “the slightest idea” where the pencil’s brass ferrule, yellow and black paint, or the glue came from.
“Literally, thousands of people cooperated to make this pencil,” Friedman said. “What brought them together and induced them to cooperate to make this pencil? There was no commissar sending out orders from some central office. It was the magic of the price system.
“That is why the operation of the free market is so essential. Not only to promote productive efficiency, but even more, to foster harmony and peace among the peoples of the world.”
Musk, the CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, didn’t comment on the post.
On Saturday, Musk appeared to take a swipe at Trump’s senior counselor for trade and manufacturing, Peter Navarro, a strong advocate of tariffs.
“A PhD in Econ from Harvard is a bad thing, not a good thing,” Musk wrote on X seemingly about Navarro. “Results in the ego/brains>>1 problem.”
Navarro responded by downplaying Musk’s remarks.
“I’ll probably see him today in the Oval — it’s no big deal,” Navarro told CNBC’s “Squawk Box” Monday morning. “He is not a car manufacturer, he’s a car assembler in many cases.”
Navarro also praised Musk’s work in the Department of Government Efficiency.
“Elon, when he’s in his DOGE lane is great, but we understand what’s going on here. Elon sells cars. He’s simply protecting his own interests,” Navarro told Fox News Channel on Sunday.
Musk’s net worth has shed an estimated $46 billion during the past three weeks of the stock market sell-off, according to the Bloomberg Billionaire’s Index.
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